Affection, image and memory in the film So Hard to Forget: contemporary studies²

Abstract

The experienced memory in certain movies displays strategically affection predications as a prerequisite to research Brazilian film fragments So Hard to Forget (2010), by Malu De Martino. Here, the film discourse exposes the intimacy and instigates the description of the cultural/sexual diversity. Affection, image and memory are the categories listed in the text. Thus, this research was carried out through primary and secondary sources, considering filmic reading with so-called contemporary studies on a theoretical and methodological approach. The results point to traces of body, gender and performance in the diversity discussion in contemporary Brazilian cinema.

Keywords
Affection; Image; Memory; Brazilian Cinema; Contemporary Studies

Resumo

A memória vivenciada em determinados filmes exibe, estrategicamente, predicações de afeto como pressuposto para pesquisar fragmentos do filme brasileiro Como esquecer (2010), de Malu De Martino. Aqui, o discurso fílmico expõe a intimidade e instiga a descrição da diversidade cultural/sexual. Afeto, imagem e memória são categorias elencadas ao longo do texto. Assim, esta pesquisa foi realizada por meio de fontes primárias e secundárias, ao considerar a leitura fílmica com os chamados estudos contemporâneos em uma abordagem teórico-metodológica. Os resultados apontam para vestígios sobre corpo, gênero e performance na discussão da diversidade no cinema nacional contemporâneo.

Palavras-chave
Afeto; Imagem; Memória; Cinema Brasileiro; Estudos Contemporâneos

Resumen

La memoria experimentado en cierta película muestra estratégicamente predicciones afecto como presupuesto a la investigación fragmentos de película brasileñas Como olvidar (2010), Malu De Martino. Aquí, el discurso fílmico expone la intimidad e instiga a la descripción de la diversidad cultural/sexual. El afecto, la imagen y la memoria son las categorías que figuran en el texto. Por lo tanto, esta investigación fue realizada por medio de fuentes primarias y secundarias, teniendo en cuenta la lectura fílmica con los llamados estudios contemporáneos sobre un enfoque teórico y metodológico. Los resultados muestran rastros de cuerpo, el género y el performance en la discusión diversidad en el cine brasileño contemporáneo.

Palabras clave
Afecto; Imagen; Memoria; Cine brasileño; Los estudios contemporáneos

The intermediation between exalting or condemning diversity has to do with the subject’s freedom of speech, especially within contemporaneousness. Presently, in the media logic, being affected by anyone else is intrinsic to cinema speech as a possibility to create subjectivity both in fiction and reality. Increasingly, the human relations represented in the cinema significantly reflect society. Cinema contributes to thinking of “new/other” parameters to diversity.

Malu de Martino’s film Como Esquecer (So Hard to Forget) (2010) presents an adaptation from Myriam Campello’s autobiographic literary novel (2003). The history of Julia – who is performed by actress Ana Paula Arósio – punctuates everyday actions, in an effervescent outcome between fiction and reality, from literature to cinema (and vice versa). As for the use of codes (verbal, non-verbal and/or syncretic) there is a remarkable effort in the translation from literature to film (STAM, 2003), in the nexus between writing and audiovisual. So, to speak, the dialogues valuate word in consonance with image, as each participant has a history to tell.

Here, the film speech exposes intimacy and instigates the description of sexual/cultural diversity. Eminently, a drama of lesbian loving (ALLEN, 1996; WITTIG, 1992) signalizes a relationship breakup. Emphasizing the discussion about sexual and gender identity, the fecund trick of femaleness prevails in the protagonism of Julia, who attempts to rebuild her life, ever since the loss of her beloved, Antonia. The synopsis indicates:

Julia is 35-year-old professor of english literature, who struggles to rebuild her life after living an intense and lasting relationship with the enigmatic Antonia. Entangled in a series of inward conflicts and before the necessary readaptation to a new life, she cannot conceal her pain as she narrates her emotions. Along the film, she meets and relates to other people who are also living, each one on his/her own, the experience of having lost something important in their lives. It turns out to be an instigating plot that talks about ordinary people who face challenges to overcome past misfortunes and the search for e new chance to find happiness.

(COMO ESQUECER, 2010 – Our translation).

From this context, the composition’s forms of corrent information emerge strategically within a hybrid and complex situation to reflect on de procedures of (re)making of the enunciation, in especial on the interdisciplinarity of art, cinema and diversity. The fragmented narrative organizes a set of complementary possibilities, in which the (inter/trans)textual writing is designed by the intersections of such intersubjectivity. The contemporary field of communication and culture, nowadays, intersects conceptual, metodological, theoretical and political issues (SODRÉ, 2014).

From the media perspective, the lens of the câmera and the sound recorder (re)veil quite peculiar notes. Thus, affection, image and memory are categories listed throughout the text. Such categories contribute to the subject’s presence within the contemporary scenario (GUMBRECHT, 2010). Therewith, strategically, the contemporary studies claim for a theoretical-methodological addressing, in order to (re)consider update and innovation (GARCIA, 2012).

Presently, the political-theoretical axis that encompass the cinema studies, in Brazil, are in consonance with the gender studies, the feminist studies, as well as the cultural studies. There are few discussions about woman in cinema (MULVEY, 1983; NAGIB, 2012), especially regarding the contemporary Brazilian cinema. This fact requires special attention as it unfolds a critical-conceptual reading about such movie.

Thus, the film opens space for a critical-conceptual debate on the female performance (CARLSON, 2009), especially when one thinks of the current cinematographic context of sexual/cultural diversity in the country. Today, women’s presence within the Brazilian cinema arises remarkably, in view of some different modes of managing/negociating the female image (FOSTER, 2003; STAM, 2003). The feminine (re)inscribes a modus operandi to access the sensitivity of affection, in an intuitive composition, far beyond subordination (SPIVAK, 2009). The film context rightly produces universal feelings of feminine renewal: the necessary maturity to keep autonomy, emancipation and Independence. Thinking of such dynamics would be bet on guidelines of sexual and gender identity in the (re)invention of contemporary narratives. The secrets of human nature can be (re)portrayed from the cinematographic fiction.

Therefore, this film refers to a psychological drama of a woman who is searching for her place in the world, as professor of English literature, who has just been bewildered. Her daily living shows an attempt to retake oneself as a human being, through the turbulence of love for rebuilding one’s life. As confrontation, it appears on the screen questions and worries.

Once theses premises are highlighted, we point to the cultural/sexual diversity established in the reading of this cinematographic proposal. Although there is not any direct problem concerning the sexual orientation of characters (gays and lesbians), the homoculture emphasizes affirmative actions and visibility (GARCIA, 2004), by metaphorically illuminating Julia’s daily portrait, staged between the university and the city of Pedra de Guaratiba (Guaratiba Stone), on the coast of Rio de Janeiro, as the main scenario of this play.

On the affection

The contemporary cinema provokes a view regarding the human dimension, signalizing possible affective ties (PEIXOTO, 2007; FOSTER, 2003; STAM, 2003). It would be the (inter)connection to someone, to a referent. Relationship that can be intense. Maybe, the metaphor of the so-called safe harbor equates an involvement. After all, affection serves as the core of the crucial circumstances of the cultural/sexual diversity on the scene. Between friendship and love, it would be tenderness within a relational space. The subject’s mediation has to do with the opportunity to allow touching and/or being touched, as the awakening to a more accurate sensitivity in the proper human relations of encounter, approximation, distance etc (PELBART, 2013).

Deprived from glamour, the crucial point of the film Como Esquecer (So Hard to Forget) lies in the unacceptability of losing one’s love as dilema of the protagonista, who has been heavily affected by rejection. Thus, affecting requires either reach the other or being hit by him/her. Something that is close to affection, attachment, complacence and/or esteem among people. Or even human relations supposed to examine, prove, afford, address, anchor, palpate the subject, life.

In the plot, Julia tries to overcome an unbearable pain, after breaking up a more than ten-year old relationship with her ex-partner. It ssems to be a delicate and at the same time hard moment, as her expectancy would be overcome this turbulent phase. However, such situation brought her debility, because of the ex-girlfriend’s (Antonia) denial. That is, going on seems to be unbearable for the protagonist, who asks to be tied at home, because of this devastating passion.

The protagonist mixes her abrupt decisions. Between sweetness and kickbacks of wrath, Julia’s pain evokes an emphatic sensing. By losing something really precious, the protagonists keeps on living merely from memories of something that has gone. Marked by sensing, Julia’s daily living is sad, overwhelmed and muffled.

In the film, her voice-over states: “love is always a pact against time”. Time that determines life. From the past to the present, with flashbacks, the cronological (diachronic and/or synchronous) intersects the script, whose plot exposes conflicts to overcome this nonreciprocal love (nox, perhaps platonic). Memory remnants. An absence emptiness. The protagonist’s actions show desolation and perplexity. To Sarlo (2007, p.9 - Our translation), “the return of the past is not always a liberating moment”. Therefore, Julia clings, voraciously, to the broken-up relationship.

Thus, the spectator witnesses the union (the communion) of affection, desire, eroticism, sensuality, sex, among other cinematographic arguments (FOSTER, 2003). More than that, the speech is blurred by this unlikely love. One notes that the film centers on the dificulties of dealing with the eminent absence. Survivor of this failure, the main character faces some stymies, disappointments and/or setbacks. She tries surviving the emotion of sharing difficult moments. Disaffected. And the narrative expresses some debilities with her difficulties to forgive, and love again.

Therefrom, the sensing, also, helps to verify reality. It is the adaptative condition of unmeasurement of the exciting facts. An act of welcoming creates proximity, intimacy, privacy and/or complicity. Affecting the other according to reality relates to a “new/other” living, it inheres relations. Manipulating, acting, moving, or even leaving the thing happen. By really experiment life, affection refers to molestation, contagion, contamination. As the possibility to afflict, to cause commotion, shake, influence, reach. Approximation and sensitization are established. Nevertheless, such cinematographic writing suggests, poetically, affection far beyond encounter or farewell. A brief organic tour absorbed by narrative, in its plurality, expands intersubjective derivations (PELBART, 2013).

The straightforward message of the film articulates love between equals. Thus, the script is explicit regarding the addressed theme: the lesbian loving. Without it, Julia is not prepared to going on in her life. Consequently, she has felt shaked by her separation. Breaking up a lasting marriage is hurtful. That is why she refuses any possibility of moving ahead. It is a powerful helplessness, as she cannot get rid of the (de)limitations of that former love. In the film, conflictive situations form a set of unconnected ideas, which make her fragilities to emerge. The narrative takes hold of the emphasis on personal sensing. One highlights specific characteristics, whose prosaic feelings shows love, desire, tension, fear, longing, loneliness, passion etc.

In the rhythmic harmony image/sound, one must take into account the derivatives of an affection policy (GARCIA, 2004), by awakening stratifications of the other’s body and personality, that bet on the core of diversity, difference, and otherness. What (re)sizes groups and social classes (HELLER, 2004), in an extra cinematographic intention (STAM, 2003), to propose an affection policy. That is, the comprehension of parameters of the contemporary culture (AGAMBEN, 2009; BAITELLO JR., 2012) updates life.

On the Image

In the beginning of the film, one notes a sequence of disharmonious images. They look video homemade scenes. From the communicative pont of view, in one’s hand the câmera shakes, thus fragmenting image and noisy sound, with aesthetic interventions. That determines the technical precariousness in the particular uptake of sublime gestures in a subtle performance (PELBART, 2015). Maybe they were flashbacks. And only later the viewer will know that it is about pieces of memories that are gone. Memories. A return of what has already happened! Or even what simply has been registered in vídeo, photograph, letter. This is evidence of a troubled affective relationship. Scenes that are sometimes recurrent in the écran.

From the dark screen (fade out), it arises the light of an open blue sky full of white clouds and a radiante Sun right at the center. The movie starts showing the shining Sun that heats and illuminates the lovers’ day. In sequence, the camera slides, moving fast, under a wall of pink flowers, to highlight the protagonist. The credits for actors’ and actresses’ names overlap the big screen of the movie theater. Julia takes a ride, as tourist, with her beloves Antonia. They stroll through gardens, benches, squares and palaces with european architecture. They play, explore and enjoy the lanscape. Literally, everything is perfect, as the scene follows with Antonia filming Julia among the colorful and well-kept beds of London gardens. The bucolic place, with extraordinary architecture, seems to be the city of London, England. The lovers’ journey in the english capital is permated by little jokes.

Posing for the câmera or in a moment of distraction, watching the landscape, Julia would supposedly be the big star of the vídeo. And Antonia, who never appears on the scene, insists on filming her lover directly, moving or stopped. In fact, the audiovisual registers gradually invade the couple’s privacy (Julia and Antonia), when they show parts of their lives. From the film image, it stands out an elegant pose on the protagonist’s smile. Her look is sometimes extremely seductive, other times it is tender. There is a laughter relay and a great declaration of loving before the câmera.

However, a disturbing state of the character is fecundated. Sonorously, it emerges a passional picture of a delicate situation that is modified by the protagonist’s violence, when she slaps the câmera and asks Antonia to turn it off. Sharp tension. The critical circumstance immediately puts the character in disjunction with her object of desire, properly differentiating it from the value of the object. A paradox signalizes the collation of Oscar Wilde’s famous frase: the love that dare not speakes its name.

In the film, the lovers’ untying designs a different perspective for Julia. Part of this type of cinematographic scene, in relation to the family album (audiovisual), will be revisited many times in the course of the film. The reiteration of this specific scene establishes memory remnants that demonstrate good moments from a mate whose absence is felt. The repetition of this passage seems to be strategic to call the attention. And further, in the film plot, one verifies a strong disenchantment with feelings of anguish and depression. There is a spirit of loving disillusionment and the sense of hindrance.

From the scenographic articulation, the location of this film prologue establishes the changing from the external plan of the public space to the internal plan of a dark room. Within it, Julia burns a photograph that refers to that tourist landscape of the vídeo previously seen. Here is a highly transient movement in the narrative, whose dynamics is stimulated by the registered facts, gradually, in a space-time exploration of the scene (PEIXOTO, 2007).

In this transitoriness, displacing would be inevitable, once it is verified the protagonist’s precarious condition, whose affective ambiguity – between loving and/or hating – seems to be unsustainable. According to Marinho (2007, p.228 - Our translation), the “experience of space informs the contexts, shaping landscapes that are products of perceptions, memories, individual and collective subjectiveness”. Therefore, things happened in the tension fragmented by space/time, listed by body, gender, and performance (CARLSON, 2009).

During the two first minutes of the film, Julia appears with curly hair; sometimes loose, other times held in a wolly cap. After all, she walks through the icy landscape of London, despite the warm and seemingly light love. When Julia reappears on the scene, already in the present plan at home, in the dark room, her hair is smooth, straight, held and without vivacity. And it keeps like that until the end of the film. Such detail, along with the light of the environment, brings the portrait of what she is living: shade, half light and pitch.

Julia cries griefly for the memory of a time lived. The protagonist gropes the table and reaches a black and white photograph of Antonia. She deliberately burns the photo. Maybe, as she wanted to delete the past, she burns the paper, burns the image, but at the same time she (re)nourishes the remembrance. The astonishment of her ex-beloved’s ghost remains inserted in herself. The last flame of this ritual is muffled with her own hand. Punishment. The sacrifice of trying to disassociate oneself from love translated into hatred under the pain of the emptiness extended to abandonment. Rejection hurts. Undoubtedly, such story (re)sizes the question of loss, exposes the character’s intimacy and instigates certain scenic description of image and sound.

About sound

I have already step on this road I know it will not work Your secrets, I know by heart. I already know the stones of the way. And I also know that I’m going to stay, there alone. So much worse. What can I do against the enchantment of this love that I deny so much avoid so much and that however is always back to bewitch With its same sad old facts that in a portrait álbum I insist on collecting There I come again like a fool Searching for the dejection that I got tired of knowing New sad days, clear nights, verses, letters, my dear I still write to you again to teel you that this is a sin I have my chest fully marked by past memories And you know the reason I will collect one more sonnet Another black and white portrait To mistreat my heart (BUARQUE; JOBIM, 1974 – Our translation)

To legitimate the desfriptive reading of the prologue, in this paper, it becomes fundamental to contextualize some impressions about the soundtrack that, comfortably, conforms to the image – which was exposed in the previous topic. Some preferences are registered, as the quality of the musical selection helps in the audiovisual illustration, to introduce the dilema of the scene.

To compose such audiovisual articulation, Chico Buarque and Tom Jobim’s song Retrato em Branco e Preto (White and Black Portrait), (1974) is configured in the background, in singer Elis Regina’s calm and at the same time dramatic voice. She vibrates the intensity of the sonorous text that awakens the plot of the story in the viewer, in a unique expressiveness. An unequaled sound. Therefore, the sonorous strategy accomodates the viewer in the reception of the cinematographic image. The lyrics evidences a lament of affection and memory, which permeates the complicated situation between the boring separation and the impossibility to keep on living. The inconsolable bitterness of a fallen love is romantically signalized to the absurd of someone who cannot enjoy life any longer, without the other’s presence.

The song lasts for the two initial minutes of the film narrative, in line with Julia’s image; although there is suficiente time to design the drama of this shattered love. In this sense, the obstinate compatibility of melody and lyrics adds strong elements to the drama lived by the protagonist.

In this case, the music plays the role of a prelude (initial theme, opening of a play), because singing directs the viewer’s attention to the plot of the play and enunciates what is likely to happen – what is expected to come. Indisputably, it is a sagacious audio for the occasion, as the poetic contente in that song exposes the fractures of a tragic love, in which one cries out for the desire to detach him/herself from the world. The aged álbum of White and Black Portrait brings emblematic remembrances that point the way to follow to avoid disillusionment. Although the dramatic force triggers a sensitive potentiality of the audiovisual set. These are idiosyncrasies inherent to the cinematographic project.

By discussing about the popular and critical music in Brazil, Vargas (2014, p.6 – Our translation) states:

Just as the constituent elements of genre construct identifications and identities in the culture, the opposite also occurs: any manipulation in the execution of some genre sketches, either with some exaggeration, inversion or mix with other music codes, may end up in sense altering and consequente failure of identification. Strictly speaking, the actions of recognition and approximation, in one side, and the actions of distancing, in the other, are solely two extremes of a complex and movable relation with multiple results. Songs and genre in the popular music in the media are nomad, that is, they suffer more transiency of style and consumption than their conceptual definitions are able to describe. Such transformations may even be a motive for creating and innovating within the genre, with both benefits and losses in the consumption of novelties.

On the narrow interface of projection/identification, the music immediately moves the spectator. The acoustic tune of the musical message provides, due to its melancholic rhythm, the comprehension of the audiovisual enunciation – between coding and decoding of the code. The sonorous weave of the song lyrics makes the image sweet through the softness of the chosen words, which is consistent with the ability of synthesizing in the plot. The approximation of lyrics and melody formalizes a loving lament: slow and sad.

For Tatit (1994), the passionateness adresses wait and remembrance, whose sonorous passage impacts the listener. The duration of lament and pain makes the subject to reflect about his/her feelings. That writing, intoxicated by the specific soundtrack, promotes a memory recall, whose spectator will understand along with the series of factors exposed in the course of the narrative. So, how don’t forget?!

On the memory

The experienced memory in certain films shows, strategically, characteristics of affection, by recalling aspects of an experienced fact. In the course of the film So Hard to Forget, flashback scenes work as intervals of a narrative construction that reiterates itself. It goes back and forth. Recomposes. In several moments, the remembrance reestablishes a protagonist’s relation with the nostalgic event of a lost love. Such remembrances characterize an important stage to be gradually unveiled in the script. These are relevant points that reiterate, reorganize the possibility of living.

The character decides to feed on remembrances, as sullen cuddles of different reminiscente instants. Fragmented time: divided, segmented, broken. The time transversalities (diachronic and/or synchronous) in this cinematographic narrative, join the flashback scenes (with the couple’s domestic shootings during tours and trips), which intersect and suture emotions. The line of such narrative weave explores different conflicts to overcome melancholy in this outdated love. In the collation of conflicts, the chronological gives place to the outcome that revolves the past, which is (re)inscribed in the present. The infinite duration of the representations of the things of the world. From memory, any previous fact gains strength through the current.

Thus, the time of the film is established in a slow process of memory that oscillates, in a moment it fails, but it is also retaken. It is a soft time that sharpens the imagination. It prevails an introspective and, at the same time revolutionary calmness, because there is something disruptive in her affective life. That is why Julia tries even resignify love. But she cannot get rid of the images from the happy past with her beloved, which invades her quotidian. In fact, she let herself be grieved and brutalized by pain. That causes dizziness.

The intensity of the emotion allows much more the memory register of this grief that remains. Julia is stuck in the past, she can hardly react, and she does the same to the spectator, when she adds his/her testimony. She clings to what has already happened, to relive the anguish and the nightmare of such a storm. She recalls the scene of a state of complete happiness, to value the unique moment present in her memory.

The unity of memory standards consists in the expression of the unity of the media speech that has been built for a long time, with its own peculiar modes of expression. Such discourse, even if it also incorporates internacional origins, it adapts to the nacional and local communicational demands, supplying the demand of the receptos who rebuild it

(LOPES, 2002, p.12 – Our translation).

For Gumbrecht (2010), the strength of the past is presente in the memory. This last one reconstitutes the subject’s senses when it poders and selects what seems to be relevant to keep in mind. These are remnants of hidden, confined memory files that now guide the quotidian. It will be (re)create and/or preservate recurrent experiences. Roughly speaking, life avails itself of a plurality of data and information that, in a versatile manner, encompass living. Therefore, memory becomes a complex process of experience and subjectivity, becuase it inscribes (acquisition, consolidation and/or retrieval of) living registers.

Notedly, priorities are worth due to their specific relevance to short, medium, or long-term memory. Memory that registers facts and/or data, that makes it possible to consider what is important to the subject. Remnants, indices, fragments of living. Scenes that have been impregnated in the memory (re)veil what is unknown. Knowing is going further. That is, it implies potentialize memory to mediate the flux of possibilities that permeate the creation of subjectivity, interwoven by experience. Then, the memory activates internal and/or external stimuli in the subject’s adaptative condition in the world.

There is no how forget. The memory brings to the surface, Julia’s attempts to deny her great love; regarding the detachment from that relationship, in face of her deep disappointment. The desperate characters breathe a difficult and frightening atmosphere. There are peaks of stress alternated by fearful contemplation. Julia does not seem to be willing to forget; as she dives deeply in cave of fear and fragility. What would have been (de)limited for both as their fate was undone. Antonia left and Julia refuses accepting it, she is devastated. The loving relationship is over. It seems to be irreversible, since there is no possibility to resume. There was a break up, a (dis)junction, a bifurcation: something has fallen apart.

Bringing a scene/situation of the memory to the surface is scouring in a region of both conflicts and interests, like the conscience (EAGLETON, 2012). Certainly, the memory colonizes the past and the present by means of emotion, support for the lived experience. In the inclusion/exclusion movement, it is worth correlating lived experience and novelty, sometimes yelling, incongruous and/or incompatible with reality. What stands out, who knows, to one’s eyes and imagination. Before images impregnated in the memory, imagination gets much more stimulated, much more fertile. These are impressions of both successful and unsuccessful experiences.

And the unusual condition of memory enhances the scenic/media expression, to mirror itself on the creative tricks of the current cinema. The forms to propose the narrative unfold to the emergency of happiness discusssed in the plot (MONZANI; MONZANI, 2008).

On the diversity

A crucial point in So Hard to Forget emerges from the affective power, which is dissolved by strategically propose the lesbian speech in the Brazilian cinema. What is not easy to do. That transverses arrangements between the novel and the film, by performing a lesbian poetic (ALLEN, 1996; LORDE, 1984; WITTIG, 1992), which announces the maximum presence of Safo, Plato’s tenth muse: a greek poetess from the greek lesbian city of Mytilene, a great cultural center in the VII century b.C. For Trevisan (2000, p.35 - Our translation), “if human desire operates with specific objectives (even if somewhat enigmatic), it is in them that one finds its both its fragility and its strength. [...] The homossexual desire shares an extremely libertarian plurality – but shares also the paradoxes of the cultural standardization of each period”.

This discourse incorporates some remembrances of an effective well-being of the lesbian couple; affected by the separation – the break up of this aliance of many years together. Purposely, the film problematizes the hegemonic system (mainstream) to the extent of questioning the referentials of daily living, of feminine, and of the woman’s image, with bundles of sense effects. Perhaps, the expectancy would be to lead the viewer to resignify concerning diversity, especially the lesbian condition.

In this type of aesthetic-political posture, the cinematographic proposal questions itself about reality, besides trespassing the conventional ruptures of the ideology of the sociocultural transformation. In a paradoxal bias, a light and tenacious image exposes affection and intimacy among women. One elects feminine texture as priority. Today, the cultural/sexual diversity in the Brazilian cinema is contaminated by alternatives such as friendship, fidelity, cheating and homoeroticism. According to Trevisan (2000, p.299 - Our translation), in the cinema: “the love between women has always been treated with a voyeur’s (debatable) complacency – which evidences how such films would aim basically to satisfy the more conventional male public”. The relationiship between people of the same sex signalizes economic, identity, sociocultural, and political aspects that are alluded by the movie. And poetically, such cinematographic dealing avails itself of the homoaffective love (FOSTER, 2003).

In this case, the protagonist attempts to get over the separation, which leads her to a profound stage of despair and oppressive complete isolation. Longing is vivified! Julia feels withdrawn, because she was abandoned by her girlfriend after an intese relationship. In the cohesive context, an homossexual professor tries to overcome the recent outcome of her loving breakup. She tries the difficult task of rearrange her life to restart it: to make new plans.

Final statements

The goal of these ideas bets on critical-conceptual questions that unfold between affection, image and memory, by highlighting the cultural/sexual diversity in the contemporary Brazilian cinema. The delicateness of the matter, which is supposed to be unveiled by the cinematographic journey equates a maxim: the human relations oriented by living the greatness of loving.

Eloquent images weave the plastic tangle of experimentations that stimulate the emergency of a cinematographic possibility attached to life. One registers a sine qua non condition that seeks to intensify the facts, by the subtleness of each action (re)veiled on the scenes. Perhaps, it may work as (inter)mediation between film and spectator. What always gives rise to an investigative enterprise of aesthetic, technical, and ethical resources of cinema during the pre-producing, producing and post-producing. In this case, cinema continues being able both to enchant the viewer.

Beyond a drama, such cinematographic proposal unrespects the conventional order and creates an alternative space to cultural/sexual diversity, when it updates questions that envolve the woman, the gender, the feminine – the lesbian condition. The so-called assumed (the ones who assume they are lesbians), the damn ones, the indecise and/or the fierce simpathizers – ironically with their d/effects – claim, politically, the lesbian presence in the Brazilian cinema.

From the political point of view, questions like lesbianism, feminine, women need to be dealt with more exclusive, in order to be better researched, especially by the critical investigation. From the feminine (lesbic) universe, the film So Hard to Forget designates a so brunt result when it tries to get rid of caricatures or stereotypes about Lesbian, Gay, Bissexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersexual, Assexual and related (LGBTQIA+) communities, in the effort to stengthen affirmative actions and visibility.

In contemporary exhaustion, how to forget one love? Difficult! Impossible! Perhaps, it would be an extraordinary blow! It would be soul gesture...

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• 1
  This text is part of the research Image, culture and diversity: contemporary studies (2016-2018)

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  May-Aug 2018

History

• Received
  25 May 2016
• Accepted
  30 Oct 2018